House Health Care Reform Adds $89 Billion to Debt When Medicare Adjustments Are Considered, Says CBO
While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has repeatedly said that health care reform would be deficit neutral, the House of Representatives passed an additional Medicare reform bill last week that would interact with the previously passed health care bill (H.R. 3962) to add $89 billion to budget deficits in the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
H.R. 3961, the Medicare Physicians Payment Rates Reform Act of 2009, is referred to as the “doc fix,” and is characterized on Pelosi’s Web site as “companion legislation” to the larger health care bill. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) calls it a “fiscal shell game.”
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the legislation will cost $210 billion dollars over a decade to implement on its own. Taken together with the Affordable Health Care for America Act (the health-care reform bill), it would add $89 billion to the federal debt between 2010 and 2019.
